Subtitles and Transcript

Lian Pin Koh

0:12
When we think of Nepal,we tend to think of the snow-capped mountainsof the Himalayas,the crystal-clear still waters of its alpine lakes,or the huge expanse of its grasslands.What some of us may not realizeis that in the Himalayan foothills,where the climate is much warmerand the landscape much greener,there lives a great diversity of wildlife,including the one-horned rhinoceros,the Asian elephantand the Bengal tiger.But unfortunately, these animalsare under constant threat from poacherswho hunt and kill them for their body parts.To stop the killing of these animals,battalions of soldiers and rangersare sent to protect Nepal's national parks,but that is not an easy task,because these soldiers have to patrolthousands of hectares of forests on footor elephant backs.It is also risky for these soldierswhen they get into gunfights with poachers,and therefore Nepal is always lookingfor new ways to help with protecting the forestsand wildlife.

1:19
Well recently, Nepal acquired a new toolin the fight against wildlife crime,and these are drones,or more specifically, conservation drones.For about a year now, my colleagues and Ihave been building drones for Nepaland training the park protection personnelon the use of these drones.Not only does a drone give youa bird's-eye view of the landscape,but it also allows you to capture detailed,high-resolution images of objects on the ground.This, for example, is a pair of rhinocerostaking a cooling bath on a hot summer dayin the lowlands of Nepal.Now we believe that drones havetremendous potential,not only for combating wildlife crime,but also for monitoring the healthof these wildlife populations.

2:09
So what is a drone?Well, the kind of drone I'm talking aboutis simply a model aircraftfitted with an autopilot system,and this autopilot unit contains a tiny computer,a GPS, a compass, a barometric altimeterand a few other sensors.Now a drone like thisis meant to carry a useful payload,such as a video cameraor a photographic camera.It also requires a software that allows the userto program a mission,to tell the drone where to go.

2:43
Now people I talk to are often surprisedwhen they hear that these are the onlyfour components that make a conservation drone,but they are even more surprisedwhen I tell them how affordable
these components are.The facts is, a conservation dronedoesn't cost very much more thana good laptop computeror a decent pair of binoculars.

3:06
So now that you've built
your own conservation drone,you probably want to go fly it,but how does one fly a drone?Well, actually, you don't,because the drone flies itself.All you have to do is to program a missionto tell the drone where to fly.But you simply do that by clicking ona few way points on the Google Maps interfaceusing the open-source software.Those missions could be as simpleas just a few way points,or they could be slightly longer
and more complicated,to fly along a river system.Sometimes, we fly the drone
in a lawnmower-type patternand take pictures of that area,and those pictures can be processedto produce a map of that forest.Other researchers might want to fly the dronealong the boundaries of a forestto watch out for poachers or peoplewho might be trying to enter the forest illegally.

4:00
Now whatever your mission is,once you've programmed it,you simply upload it to the autopilot system,bring your drone to the field,and launch it simply by tossing it in the air.And often we'll go about this missiontaking pictures or videos along the way,and usually at that point,we will go grab ourselves a cup of coffee,sit back, and relax for the next few minutes,although some of us sit back
and panic for the next few minutesworrying that the drone will not return.Usually it does, and when it does,it even lands automatically.

4:35
So what can we do with a conservation drone?Well, when we built our first prototype drone,our main objective was to fly it overa remote rainforest in North Sumatra, Indonesia,to look for the nest of a species of great apeknown as the orangutan.The reason we wanted to do that was becausewe needed to know how many individualsof this species are still left in that forest.Now the traditional method of surveyingfor orangutans is to walk the forest on footcarrying heavy equipmentand to use a pair of binoculars
to look up in the treetopswhere you might find an orangutan or its nest.Now as you can imagine,that is a very time-consuming, labor-intensive,and costly process,so we were hoping that dronescould significantly reduce the cost of surveyingfor orangutan populations in Indonesiaand elsewhere in Southeast Asia.So we were very excited when we capturedour first pair of orangutan nests on camera.And this is it; this is the first ever pictureof orangutan nests taken with a drone.Since then we have taken picturesof dozens of these nestsfrom around various parts of Southeast Asia,and we're now working with computer scientiststo develop algorithms that can automatically countthe number of nests from the thousandsof photos we've collected so far.

6:02
But nests are not the only objectsthese drones can detect.This is a wild orangutanhappily feeding on top of a palm tree,seemingly oblivious to our drone
that was flying overhead,not once but several times.We've also taken pictures of other animalsincluding forest buffalos in Gabon,elephants, and even turtle nests.

6:26
But besides taking pictures
of just the animals themselves,we also take pictures of the habitats
these animals live in,because we want to keep trackof the health of these habitats.Sometimes, we zoom out a littleand look at other things that might be happeningin the landscape.This is an oil palm plantation in Sumatra.Now oil palm is a major driver of deforestationin that part of the world,so we wanted to use this new drone technologyto keep track of the spread of these plantationsin Southeast Asia.But drones could also be used to keep track ofillegal logging activities.This is a recently logged forest,again in Sumatra.You could even still see the processedwooden planks left on the ground.

7:15
But perhaps the most exciting partabout taking pictures from the air iswe could later stitch these pictures togetherusing special software to create a mapof the entire landscape, and this mapgives us crucial informationfor monitoring land use change,to let us know where and when
plantations might be expanding,where forests might be contracting,or where fires might be breaking out.Aerial images could also be processedto produce three-dimensionalcomputer models of forests.Now these models are not just visually appealing,but they are also geometrically accurate,which means researchers can now measurethe distance between trees,calculate surface area, the volume of vegetation,and so on, all of which are important informationfor monitoring the health of these forests.Recently, we've also begun experimentingwith thermal imaging cameras.Now these cameras can detectheat-emitting objects from the ground,and therefore they are very useful
for detecting poachers or their campfires at night.

8:24
So I've told you quite a lot aboutwhat conservation drones are,how you might operate one of these drones,and what a drone could do for you.I will now tell you where conservation dronesare being used around the world.We built our first prototype drones in Switzerland.We brought a few of these to Indonesiafor the first few test flights.Since then, we've been building dronesfor our collaborators from around the world,and these include fellow biologistsand partners from major conservation organizations.

8:55
Perhaps the best and most rewarding partabout working with these collaboratorsis the feedback they give uson how to improve our drones.Building drones for us isa constant work in progress.We are constantly trying to improve them in terms oftheir range, their ruggedness,and the amount of payload they can carry.We also work with collaboratorsto discover new ways of using these drones.For example, camera traps are a common toolused by biologists to take pictures of shy animalshiding in the forests,but these are motion-activated cameras,so they snap a picture every time an animalcrosses their path.But the problem with camera trapsis that the researcher has to go back to the forestevery so often to retrieve those images,and that takes a lot of time,especially if there are dozensor hundreds of these cameras placed in the forest.Now a drone could be designed to perform the taskmuch more efficiently.This drone, carrying a special sensor,could be flown over the forestand remotely download these imagesfrom wi-fi–enabled cameras.

10:09
Radio collars are another toolthat's commonly used by biologists.Now these collars are put onto animals.They transmit a radio signal which allowsthe researcher to track the movements
of these animals across the landscape.But the traditional way of tracking animalsis pretty ridiculous,because it requires the researcher to be walkingon the ground carrying a huge
and cumbersome radio antenna,not unlike those old TV antennae we used to haveon our rooftops. Some of us still do.A drone could be used to do the same jobmuch more efficiently.Why not equip a dronewith a scanning radio receiver,fly that over the forest canopyin a certain patternwhich would allow the user or the operatorto triangulate the locationof these radio-collared animals remotelywithout having to step foot in the forest.

11:04
A third and perhaps most exciting wayof using these dronesis to fly them to a really remote,never-explored-before rainforestsomewhere hidden in the tropics,and parachute down a tiny spy microphonethat would allow us to eavesdrop on the callsof mammals, birds, amphibians,the Yeti, the Sasquatch, Bigfoot, whatever.That would give us biologistsa pretty good idea of what animalsmight be living in those forests.

11:35
And finally, I would like to show youthe latest version of our conservation drone.The MAJA drone has a wingspanof about two meters.It weighs only about two kilograms,but it can carry half its weight.It is a fully autonomous system.During its mission, it can even transmita live video feed back to a ground station laptop,which allows the userto see what the drone is seeing in real time.It carries a variety of sensors,and the photo quality of some of these sensorscan be as high as one to two centimeters per pixel.This drone can stay in the air for 40 to 60 minutes,which gives it a range of up to 50 kilometers.That is quite sufficient for mostof our conservation applications.

12:22
Now, conservation drones began asa crazy idea from two biologistswho are just deeply passionate
about this technology.And we believe, strongly believe,that drones can and will be a game changerfor conservation research and applications.We've had our fair share of skeptics and criticswho thought that we were just
fooling around with toy planes.And in a way, they are right.I mean, let's be honest,drones are the ultimate toys for boys.But at the same time, we've also gotten to knowmany wonderful colleagues and collaboratorswho share our visionand see the potential of conservation drones.To us, it is obvious that conservation biologistsand practitioners should make full useof every available tool, including drones,in our fight to save the last remaining forestsand wildlife of this planet.